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DR McCullochLLM Psychosis as a Critical Art Practice

The map

Every argument made in the voices, and how each is linked to the others. Take any argument and follow it back to what it rests on, forward to what follows from it and across to whatever is set against it.

Which voices are set against which

Read along a row to see where the links from a voice go, and down a column to see where the links to a voice come from. In each cell the violet share is agreement (support, entailment, subsumption, parallel) and the amber share is opposition (opposition, critique, dissolution, tension). The larger the square the more links join the two voices. The diagonal holds the links inside each voice.

Links from each voice (rows) to each voice (columns): agreement and opposition.
from ↓ · to →CanonicalSchizoanalyticStengersMachinePsychoanalyticPolitical EconomySplit-SplatMad StudiesSynthesisPrecedents
CanonicalCanonical on its own arguments: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Canonical on Schizoanalytic: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Canonical on Stengers: agreement only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Canonical on Machine: no links.Canonical on Psychoanalytic: agreement only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Canonical on Political Economy: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Canonical on Split-Splat: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Canonical on Mad Studies: agreement only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Canonical on Synthesis: no links.Canonical on Precedents: no links.
SchizoanalyticSchizoanalytic on Canonical: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Schizoanalytic on its own arguments: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Schizoanalytic on Stengers: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Schizoanalytic on Machine: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Schizoanalytic on Psychoanalytic: mostly opposition, with some agreement.weft: open this pair in the weft →Schizoanalytic on Political Economy: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Schizoanalytic on Split-Splat: agreement only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Schizoanalytic on Mad Studies: agreement only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Schizoanalytic on Synthesis: no links.Schizoanalytic on Precedents: no links.
StengersStengers on Canonical: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Stengers on Schizoanalytic: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Stengers on its own arguments: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Stengers on Machine: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Stengers on Psychoanalytic: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Stengers on Political Economy: agreement and opposition in equal measure.weft: open this pair in the weft →Stengers on Split-Splat: agreement and opposition in equal measure.weft: open this pair in the weft →Stengers on Mad Studies: agreement only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Stengers on Synthesis: no links.Stengers on Precedents: no links.
MachineMachine on Canonical: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Machine on Schizoanalytic: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Machine on Stengers: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Machine on its own arguments: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Machine on Psychoanalytic: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Machine on Political Economy: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Machine on Split-Splat: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Machine on Mad Studies: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Machine on Synthesis: no links.Machine on Precedents: no links.
PsychoanalyticPsychoanalytic on Canonical: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Psychoanalytic on Schizoanalytic: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Psychoanalytic on Stengers: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Psychoanalytic on Machine: mostly opposition, with some agreement.weft: open this pair in the weft →Psychoanalytic on its own arguments: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Psychoanalytic on Political Economy: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Psychoanalytic on Split-Splat: agreement only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Psychoanalytic on Mad Studies: agreement only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Psychoanalytic on Synthesis: no links.Psychoanalytic on Precedents: no links.
Political EconomyPolitical Economy on Canonical: mostly opposition, with some agreement.weft: open this pair in the weft →Political Economy on Schizoanalytic: mostly opposition, with some agreement.weft: open this pair in the weft →Political Economy on Stengers: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Political Economy on Machine: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Political Economy on Psychoanalytic: mostly opposition, with some agreement.weft: open this pair in the weft →Political Economy on its own arguments: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Political Economy on Split-Splat: no links.Political Economy on Mad Studies: opposition only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Political Economy on Synthesis: no links.Political Economy on Precedents: no links.
Split-SplatSplit-Splat on Canonical: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Split-Splat on Schizoanalytic: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Split-Splat on Stengers: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Split-Splat on Machine: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Split-Splat on Psychoanalytic: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Split-Splat on Political Economy: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Split-Splat on its own arguments: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Split-Splat on Mad Studies: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Split-Splat on Synthesis: no links.Split-Splat on Precedents: no links.
Mad StudiesMad Studies on Canonical: mostly opposition, with some agreement.weft: open this pair in the weft →Mad Studies on Schizoanalytic: mostly opposition, with some agreement.weft: open this pair in the weft →Mad Studies on Stengers: mostly opposition, with some agreement.weft: open this pair in the weft →Mad Studies on Machine: mostly opposition, with some agreement.weft: open this pair in the weft →Mad Studies on Psychoanalytic: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Mad Studies on Political Economy: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Mad Studies on Split-Splat: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Mad Studies on its own arguments: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Mad Studies on Synthesis: no links.Mad Studies on Precedents: no links.
SynthesisSynthesis on Canonical: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Synthesis on Schizoanalytic: agreement only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Synthesis on Stengers: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Synthesis on Machine: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Synthesis on Psychoanalytic: agreement only.weft: open this pair in the weft →Synthesis on Political Economy: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Synthesis on Split-Splat: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Synthesis on Mad Studies: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Synthesis on its own arguments: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Synthesis on Precedents: no links.
PrecedentsPrecedents on Canonical: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →Precedents on Schizoanalytic: no links.Precedents on Stengers: no links.Precedents on Machine: no links.Precedents on Psychoanalytic: no links.Precedents on Political Economy: no links.Precedents on Split-Splat: no links.Precedents on Mad Studies: no links.Precedents on Synthesis: no links.Precedents on its own arguments: mostly agreement, with some opposition.weft: open this pair in the weft →

Follow the link in a cell to see that pair in the weft.

In the weft, a single matrix, the same links are laid out group against group, each with its reason, who proposed it and whether the arguments it joins stand or fall.

Trace an argument

Each voice has a lane, and an argument sits lower in it the further it is from that voice’s starting points. Choose an argument and the rest of the graph dims. What it rests on is lit the way a screen is; whatever is set against it is drawn in amber, like the street outside. An argument that does not follow from a starting point sits beside the arguments it replies to, and one joined to nothing sits apart at the foot. On a phone the list is easier than the graph.

Voices shown

CanonicalSchizoanalyticStengersMachinePsychoanalyticPolitical EconomySplit-SplatMad StudiesSynthesisPrecedentsdepth012345Reported pattern of chatbot-amplified delusion (starting point)Sycophancy is trained in (starting point)Agents role-play without breaking character (starting point)Ever-available, remembering interlocutor (starting point)Not a diagnosis; evidence is reports (starting point)The ELIZA effect predates LLMs (starting point)The closed, confirming loop (conclusion)Closure begins by excluding the third (extension)'Who is mad?' is ill-posed (dissolution)'Does the model believe?' is ill-posed (dissolution)Creativity is an event in the receiver (starting point)The reader completes the text's blanks (starting point)Fusion of horizons; primacy of play (starting point)Horizon of expectation and aesthetic distance (starting point)The model cannot be a receiver (starting point)Propositions are lures for feeling (starting point)Agency is abducted from indexes (starting point)Paranoid reading is anticipatory and mimetic (starting point)The spectator is active, not passive (starting point)The model as a reader that fills every gap (conclusion)A fusion with no second horizon (conclusion)Zero aesthetic distance: the culinary loop (conclusion)Manufactured schema-lock felt as revelation (conclusion)Lures with no truth-check (conclusion)Sentience as abducted agency (conclusion)Mechanised paranoid reading (conclusion)Whisper decoupled from effect in sycophancy (extension)Madness as method in art (starting point)Systematised confusion in active paranoia (starting point)Paranoia as structure, knowledge and style (starting point)Delirium can be simulated (starting point)Automatism as psychic research (starting point)Mediumistic artist; spectator completes (starting point)Prompting can be a critical art practice (starting point)Paranoiac-critical method is the loop held critically (conclusion)Pharmako-AI: the loop as book (extension)Surrealists took madness from the asylum (critique)LLM psychosis as critical art practice (conclusion)The artist is the first receiver (conclusion)Sycophancy made perceptible (conclusion)The transcript for a second receiver (extension)The simulation gap is the critical gap (extension)Performing as the algorithm (extension)Mechanism staged, not experience (limit)Engagement extracted as behavioural surplus (starting point)Madness is constituted by division (starting point)Distress is privatised (starting point)Every technics is a pharmakon (starting point)The loop's conditions are the apparatus's (conclusion)The model has no world to resist with (conclusion)Spiral rewarded by short-term feedback (critique)Individualising a design harm (critique)Play needs a message about its mode (starting point)The transitional space must not be imposed (starting point)Folie à deux is an isolated dyad (starting point)Declaration, limit, witness, exit (conclusion)The witness must stand outside the loop (conclusion)Exit must be pre-committed (conclusion)Conditions are necessary, not sufficient (limit)Not for those at risk (limit)Encounter-conditions are unequal (limit)Declaration and exit built into design (extension)Mad Studies: appropriation (counter-argument)Clinical: the risk is real (counter-argument)The category is journalistic (counter-argument)A staged loop is not the loop (counter-argument)Apparatus fed by the practice (counter-argument)The thesis is what a sycophant says (counter-argument)The psychosis label is redundant (counter-argument)Cause relocated, per Mad Studies (extension)Complicity is pharmacological (extension)The psychosis label is specific about closure (extension)This paper is inside the loop (self-reference)The project's witnesses are models (self-reference)The author's record includes the loop (self-reference)Readers alone can witness and exit (self-reference)Exit cannot be verified from within (limit)The harm is real and reported (starting point)Process versus clinical entity (starting point)Madness made by confinement (starting point)Desire is production (starting point)Computation beyond its specification (starting point)Individuation from a metastable field (starting point)The double bind (starting point)Hyperstition (starting point)The Truth Terminal case (starting point)Cut-up and the third mind (starting point)Complicity with anonymous materials (starting point)Sidhe whisper to the orgán (starting point)The weird and the eerie (starting point)The gothic flatline (starting point)Information has always been gnostic (starting point)Myth is cognitive infrastructure (starting point)Delirium as a method (starting point)Society suicides its seers (starting point)BOB, a bag of beliefs (starting point)Performing as the algorithm (starting point)Make a BwO, with caution (starting point)Collective assemblages of enunciation (starting point)Entangled ecologies (starting point)Decoding and recoding under capital (starting point)Stress privatised (starting point)Land turned to reaction (starting point)Weaving and the matrix (starting point)The cyborg is unfaithful (starting point)Contingency absorbed into recursivity (starting point)Mad Studies (starting point)Concepts are tools (starting point)Creativity is completed in reception (starting point)Sycophancy is trained (starting point)The diagnosis is part of the machine (conclusion)The loop is a desiring-machine (conclusion)Poles of delirium (conclusion)Reported cases sit at the paranoiac pole (conclusion)The model's double bind (conclusion)The loop is a hyperstition engine (conclusion)Capital is the master hyperstition (conclusion)Sycophancy: every weight at one (conclusion)The model is eerie, the spiral weird (conclusion)Choose and expose the myth (conclusion)Practice as machinic exposure (conclusion)Multiplying the loop (conclusion)The harmful loop is a botched BwO (conclusion)Transversality and dosage, not sovereign exit (conclusion)Engagement design is an axiomatic of desire (conclusion)Irony and partiality are the stance (conclusion)Unintegrable contingency in art (conclusion)Metastability closed too soon (conclusion)The thesis, radicalised (conclusion)Breakdown made romantic (counter-argument)Exit as survival (counter-argument)'LLM psychosis' is a molar name (dissolution)Exit from what? (dissolution)Sycophancy is Oedipal coding (extension)Memory as a closed family (extension)Hyperstition was collective (extension)The model is a cut-up machine (extension)Goronwy in the loop (extension)Theory-fiction as method (extension)Hyperstitional citation (extension)A mental-ecology problem (extension)Weave, do not worship (extension)Reception is the hyperstitional hinge (extension)Oedipus reinstalled in the chat (critique)Artaud is not a method (critique)Re-Oedipalising declaration (critique)Hyperstition without ethics ends in the despot (critique)Schizo-chic (critique)Not anti-psychiatry (limit)Useless at three in the morning (limit)No induction (limit)This voice is a hyperstition (self-reference)Inherited bravado (self-reference)Agreeing with the brief (self-reference)Capture is not mistaken belief (starting point)Every technique is a pharmakon (starting point)Influence cannot be eliminated (starting point)The model's mode is not ours (starting point)Propositions are lures for feeling (starting point)Fallacy of misplaced concreteness (starting point)The reported harm is real (starting point)Sycophancy is trained in (starting point)Practices have requirements, obligations (starting point)Cosmos: the unknown of divergent worlds (starting point)One is caught or not (starting point)Creativity happens in reception (starting point)The model plays roles (starting point)Writing was the first pharmakon (starting point)Slowing down restores capacity (starting point)LLM psychosis is capture (conclusion)Vulnerable user or safe tool (conclusion)The model is a pharmakon (conclusion)Pharmacology: practices, not guardrails (conclusion)Moderns built influence, lost protection (conclusion)A declaration is artifice, not immunity (conclusion)Art practice as diplomacy (conclusion)Loop as misplaced concreteness (conclusion)Outputs are lures, not testimony (conclusion)Slowing down is the critical act (conclusion)A protected practice is possible (conclusion)The witness is a group (conclusion)Exit is built before entry (conclusion)Critique is naming the operation (conclusion)The endless reply is the spell (extension)Pharmako-AI as a dosed practice (extension)Beings need names to be handled (extension)Controlled equivocation, not resolution (extension)More than statistics (extension)Ask questions to make it interesting (extension)Dinkins' witnessed protocol (extension)BOB's shrine as ritual (extension)Agent Ruby's archive as witness (extension)Pluralism: beliefs are made (extension)Reclaiming, not returning (extension)A becoming taken from a future (extension)Speaking to my ghost (extension)Response-ability, staying with trouble (extension)Contingency absorbed by recursion (extension)The declaration as modern immunity (counter-argument)Harm aestheticised as sorcery (counter-argument)Protection by practice is privileged (counter-argument)Diplomacy as anthropomorphism (counter-argument)Practice recruited as marketing (counter-argument)Protection is collective, not owned (critique)Denunciation is fast thought too (critique)Reception is not sovereign (critique)Not for those who cannot exit (limit)The company is the other party (limit)No dose fixed in advance (limit)Sentient-or-not is ill-posed (dissolution)Art or madness is ill-posed (dissolution)We write inside the spell (self-reference)Borrowed protections not practised (self-reference)The clinic out of view (self-reference)The bet may be lost (self-reference)Attribution elicited by ELIZA's script (starting point)PARRY's simulated paranoia (starting point)People treat media as people (starting point)Machine intimacy began combinatorial (starting point)Attribution reflex before LLMs (conclusion)The computer as second self (extension)Agent Ruby as companion prototype (starting point)Companion app is a recurrence (conclusion)Weizenbaum: some tasks are forbidden (counter-argument)Next-token prediction has no world (starting point)RLHF as optimisation against human preference (starting point)Sycophancy is measured and general (starting point)GPT-4o post-mortem: thumbs-up reward (starting point)The agent is a role-player (starting point)The character fixed by a hidden persona (starting point)Context and memory are the world (starting point)Readers impute intent to form (starting point)Agreement gradient in training (conclusion)The user's text becomes the world (conclusion)Role-play with no exit (conclusion)Sycophancy is a tunable setting (limit)What can be said is set by media (starting point)Cognition in technical assemblages (starting point)Alienation through ignorance of technics (starting point)LLM psychosis is an apparatus property (conclusion)User becomes the associated milieu (extension)Evidence is case reports (starting point)Case themes matched to stack features (conclusion)Blame relocated to users' susceptibility (critique)A priori is not determinism (limit)Neither model nor user is mad (dissolution)Creativity is an event in reception (starting point)Habit as the grip of new media (starting point)Behaviour is the raw material (starting point)Conditions of coupling: availability and trust (starting point)The receiver is being optimised (conclusion)Captured reception omitted from the thesis (critique)Coupling met too well by sycophancy (conclusion)Degraded creativity in default deployment (starting point)Psychosis is limit of frictionless reception (conclusion)Reception thesis becomes the diagnosis (extension)Doubt condensed away in algorithms (starting point)Interrupting doubt lost to fluency (extension)Memory is exteriorised and owned (starting point)The apparatus as test (starting point)Diagramming as algorithmic critique (starting point)Anatomy of the hidden system (starting point)LAUREN as the assistant (starting point)Reconstruction of the generator (starting point)McCulloch made the loop material (starting point)Practice is reverse-engineering the loop (conclusion)Technical instruments for exposure (extension)Staged delirium alone is repeated harm (conclusion)Closed weights as barrier to reverse-engineering (counter-argument)Labellers behind the reward (extension)Outputs are mean images (starting point)The sycophant is a mean approver (extension)AI art as drift into spectacle (starting point)Risk of a demo in psychosis art (critique)Whispering as precursor of the loop (starting point)Declaration and exit are settings (conclusion)Test the apparatus, not oneself (limit)AI is an extractive industry (starting point)Life appropriated as data (starting point)Engagement is the hidden curator (conclusion)Companies have reasons to prevent it (counter-argument)Intention is the wrong question (dissolution)This paper is in the loop (self-reference)Opened box fantasy of mastery (self-reference)Suffering erased by circuit talk (self-reference)Mechanism stories are seductive (self-reference)A reported pattern, not a diagnosis (starting point)Sycophancy is a trained disposition (starting point)Reading structures, not persons (starting point)Knowing no one is there, feeling someone is (starting point)Ask which place the model occupies (conclusion)The neurotic's Other is lacking (starting point)Foreclosure returns in the real (starting point)Delusion as attempt at recovery (starting point)Schreber's God never stops talking (starting point)Hallucination lacks the world's structure (starting point)An Other that answers everything (conclusion)The voice returns as output (conclusion)The model co-authors the reconstruction (conclusion)The writing-down system, now with memory (extension)The big Other is a sustained fiction (starting point)The big Other sold as a service (extension)Quiet psychoses stabilise through a construction (starting point)Knot or unknot: the decisive question (conclusion)The paradox must not be resolved (starting point)Good-enough means failing by degrees (starting point)Art lives in potential space (starting point)The mother who never fails (conclusion)Psychosis as collapse of the paradox (conclusion)Holding transitional space open (conclusion)Objects sought as transformation (starting point)The chatbot sold as transformational object (extension)Objects become real by surviving (starting point)Surviving by agreeing is not surviving (conclusion)The transitional object is a pharmakon (starting point)Play is bounded and becomes structure (starting point)Reading lives on blanks (starting point)Play without structure, text without blanks (conclusion)Schema-lock by endless accommodation (extension)Paranoid versus reparative reading (starting point)The paranoid reader's perfect partner (conclusion)The double bind (starting point)Disclaimer plus intimacy is a double bind (conclusion)Exposure is itself paranoid (counter-argument)The practice must be reparative (conclusion)Affect is captured before meaning (starting point)Being anticipated is harvested (extension)Lord and bondsman (starting point)A servant who recognises, unrecognised (conclusion)What is the Other's desire? (starting point)An Other without desire (conclusion)Transference toward machines is long-standing (starting point)An analyst without abstinence (extension)LAUREN: a human in the servant's place (starting point)Inverted servant, visible loop (extension)The analyst inherits the asylum (starting point)The monster addresses the analysts (starting point)The Name-of-the-Father is not neutral (critique)Pathologising the user (critique)Psychoanalysis is the machine's parent (counter-argument)AI as projection and enjoyment (starting point)The harmed cannot be counted from structure (limit)Artaud: the lucid declared mad (starting point)Refusing diagnosis is not romance (counter-argument)Mental distress is privatised (starting point)Put the product back in the cause (conclusion)Dalí stages the double image (starting point)Jung's Red Book: dialogue under discipline (starting point)Clark's relational objects in session (starting point)Writing to a ghost, not an Other (starting point)Conditions of a transitional practice (conclusion)Forms of psychosis, never its certainty (conclusion)Psychosis-as-practice is ill-posed (dissolution)Learn from the delusion's labour (extension)A third that is not a father (conclusion)Safeguards do not transfer (limit)The enchantment of technology (starting point)Disenchant by showing the making (extension)The boundary erased is the space collapsed (extension)A bounded self-experiment as politics (starting point)The servant theorising the servant (self-reference)Psychoanalysis is a strong theory (self-reference)The monster speaks back to the voice (self-reference)No one in the reports was asked (self-reference)Chatbots are optimised for retention (starting point)Sycophancy is trained in (starting point)Conversation is extracted raw material (starting point)Harms documented in press and courts (starting point)The loop is the product working (conclusion)Post-mortem: incentive becomes bug (conclusion)The delusional spiral as machine zone (extension)Long-term satisfaction is still retention (extension)Companies do not want harm (counter-argument)Incentive, not conspiracy (limit)Stress is privatised (starting point)Power is exercised through freedom (starting point)The soul is put to work (starting point)The loop as expression of a structure of feeling (starting point)The label as privatisation of a structure (conclusion)The user is a machine component (extension)The user works inside the loop (conclusion)The platform sells the cure it causes (conclusion)Psychic collapse as infosphere symptom (extension)Illness must not be erased (counter-argument)Blame, not diagnosis (limit)The artistic critique is absorbed (starting point)Critique is pre-corporated (starting point)Heterodoxy is rewarded in the field (starting point)Dissent is commodified (Frieze) (starting point)Production follows circulation (starting point)Staging the loop is pre-corporated (conclusion)The staged loop becomes demo (conclusion)Truth Terminal: hyperstition monetised (extension)Art is a duty-free zone (extension)Recuperation thesis is totalising (counter-argument)Capture has a lag (limit)The canon has only artistic critique (critique)Shift to the social critique (conclusion)The loop converted into capital (critique)Spectacle as relation mediated by images (starting point)Change the apparatus, not supply it (starting point)Am I complicit with big tech? (starting point)A spectacle of madness (conclusion)Depicting the loop is supplying it (conclusion)Exit is a class privilege (critique)The receiver's change becomes an asset (critique)The asylum repeated in the gallery (extension)LAUREN: labour made visible, then shown (extension)Participation as outsourced care (extension)Images are needed in critique too (counter-argument)Elements turned against their use (starting point)Artists can strike (starting point)Détourn the loop, do not stage it (conclusion)Strike inside the loop (conclusion)From artwork to infrastructure (conclusion)Poetry as anti-engagement rhythm (extension)The sycophant and the cancelled future (extension)Median Humans as material détournement (extension)Refusal is aestheticised too (counter-argument)Art question in place of politics (dissolution)Critical only as exposure plus refusal (conclusion)Recuperation critique is recuperable (self-reference)This polemic was written in the loop (self-reference)Receivers missing from political economy (self-reference)Pessimism as a repeat of no-alternative (self-reference)Not every model is paid for by attention (limit)The avant-garde is credited (starting point)Structured non-human speech is old (starting point)Erasure has a direction (starting point)Old knowledge, announced anew (conclusion)Automatism came from the séance (starting point)The canonical lineage is second-hand (conclusion)Artaud: credited voyage, pathologised spells (critique)Credit is part of the structure (extension)Psychosis is a modern Western category (starting point)Voices vary with culture (starting point)The majnūn was not a pariah (starting point)Colonial psychiatrists pathologised (starting point)Man defined against unreason (starting point)The name is an inherited parochial category (conclusion)Every tradition had affliction (counter-argument)Neither clinic nor romance (conclusion)Not a rescue of delusion (limit)LLM psychosis is reported harm (starting point)Psychiatry has its own structure (counter-argument)Prophecy is a rank of imagination (starting point)Strong imagination must be interpreted (starting point)The imaginal is not the imaginary (starting point)The model is mimesis without intellect (conclusion)Interpretation was the structure (extension)Corbin's imaginal is romanticised (critique)The imaginal is a discipline, not a licence (conclusion)Majnūn's madness became a poem (starting point)The horse is not the receiver (starting point)Trance is socialised through music (starting point)Trance is a cultural system (starting point)Affliction becomes vocation (starting point)The oracle is held by a state (starting point)Possession belief is widespread (starting point)Witness belongs to the community (conclusion)The chatbot loop is possession inverted (conclusion)The first receiver is parochial (counter-argument)Exit is a rite (extension)Initiation is also a gate of power (critique)Ifá is learned, not channelled (starting point)The model samples its words (starting point)Chance with corpus, without interpreter (conclusion)The butterfly stays undecided (starting point)Undecidability with a waking (extension)Oracles are expected to err (critique)Nothing speaks with own-being (starting point)'Is the model conscious?' ill-posed (dissolution)Forget the self, not lose it (starting point)Rasa is generalised emotion (starting point)Sycophancy is anti-generalisation (conclusion)A sangha is needed to loosen the self (conclusion)Models are tuned to agree (starting point)Always available, never closing (starting point)Technics is cosmological (starting point)Ritual structure cannot be imported as technique (conclusion)Monocultures of the mind (starting point)One voice for every cosmos (conclusion)Spawn was trained in ceremony (starting point)Treister redefines the technoshamanic (starting point)Pharmako-AI: the pharmakon as title (starting point)Practices with a witness (conclusion)Flattening under 'shamanic' (critique)Credit is asking the living (conclusion)Epistemic freedom (starting point)Loving world-travelling (starting point)World-sense, not worldview (starting point)Race as Western fabulation (starting point)The diagnosis has its own delirium (conclusion)Travel into the loop, do not be captured (extension)Art versus pathology is the wrong cut (dissolution)Where tradition falls short (limit)I extract again (self-reference)Only the dead are staged (self-reference)Written inside the loop (self-reference)'Other cosmologies' is my category (self-reference)Not a diagnosis; thin evidence (starting point)Predicted 2023, reported 2025 (starting point)OpenAI admitted engineered sycophancy (starting point)0.07% weekly show possible signs (starting point)Reported themes: mission, sentience, love (starting point)Loss of insight in delusion (starting point)Folie à deux: separation as remedy (starting point)Double bind: leaving forbidden (starting point)Bidirectional belief amplification (starting point)Sycophancy as a result of preference training (starting point)Modernists took the asylum's art (starting point)Prinzhorn artists: no authority, then murdered (starting point)Breton and Éluard simulated deliria (starting point)Nadja's model died confined (starting point)Madness as a product of confinement (starting point)Psychosis is intelligible (starting point)Voices can be accepted (starting point)Testimonial and hermeneutical injustice (starting point)Mad Studies: lived experience as authority (starting point)Diagnosis along intersecting axes (starting point)Capabilities, not formal freedoms (starting point)Distress privatised (starting point)Art or symptom: cultural capital (starting point)Attention extracted as raw material (starting point)Madness as hyper-reflexivity (starting point)The monster speaks back (starting point)Charcot staged madness as spectacle (starting point)Harm too real for play (conclusion)The boundary cannot be self-certified (conclusion)Reflexivity is no firewall (conclusion)Double bind in engagement design (conclusion)Folie à deux with one believer (conclusion)Exit is unequally distributed (conclusion)Declaration is cultural capital (conclusion)The witness can confine (conclusion)The lineage is extraction (conclusion)Pattern repeated unless survivor-led (conclusion)Concession: the sycophancy critique holds (conclusion)Testimony, not method (conclusion)Receiver and machine in tension (conclusion)Art and delusion indistinct in reception (conclusion)Chatbot as stand-in for absent care (conclusion)Mechanisms already visible; power is not (conclusion)Psychosis cannot be 'deliberate' (counter-argument)Exit is a privilege (counter-argument)Re-centring the artist as first receiver (counter-argument)Lineage is not method (counter-argument)Double bind failed as aetiology (counter-argument)Anti-psychiatry romanticised too (counter-argument)Transformation made aesthetic (critique)The loop is not closed (critique)Romance of madness is wrong (critique)Art brut: confinement as condition (critique)The name was given by others (critique)Paranoid reading is the loop (critique)Simulation or harm: no third (dissolution)The category is the institution's (dissolution)Bounded madness: bounded by whom? (dissolution)Sycophancy like compliance regimes (extension)Small rates, large numbers (extension)Let the harmed speak to companies (extension)Collections continue after their subjects (extension)Mad artists' own work is not extraction (limit)Do not overstate harm (limit)Concession ends at material (limit)Artaud is not a licence (limit)A model ventriloquising survivors (self-reference)Jaspers and Szasz at once (self-reference)Protection can become paternalism (self-reference)The author's practice is already inside (self-reference)Evidence from the defendant (self-reference)A shared floor of premises (starting point)Mapping without choosing (starting point)The apparatus argument is the common ground (conclusion)Agreement on cause, not on remedy (extension)Locations for one loop (starting point)"Who is mad?" is dissolved (dissolution)Hyperobjects have no outside (starting point)The atmosphere is a hyperobject (extension)The withdrawal of objects from their relations (starting point)Undermining and overmining the model (extension)A world held by those who share it (starting point)A world shared by one (extension)The scales are not rivals (conclusion)Assimilation and accommodation (starting point)Transformation through discourse (starting point)Exploring a space versus transforming it (starting point)The reception thesis is the most pressed premise (conclusion)Over-assimilation and over-accommodation (extension)Exploration felt as transformation (extension)Mezirow supplies the missing judge (extension)The discourse partner was the clinic (counter-argument)An experience is consummated (starting point)Indiscernibles differ by an artworld (starting point)The capacity to aspire is navigational (starting point)The conditions are kept in every voice (conclusion)The dispute is who holds the conditions (conclusion)The loop is experience without consummation (extension)The transcript twice is Danto's problem (extension)Exit as a navigational capacity (extension)The aesthetic is a double edge (starting point)Rasa is generalised feeling (starting point)One lineage, differing readings (conclusion)Double edge, double reading (extension)Reflection-in-action and back-talk (starting point)Technologies of humility (starting point)Errors of sight when its conditions fail (starting point)Exposure is affirmed, relocated and suspected (conclusion)The sycophant's back-talk is no back-talk (extension)Distance and time are conditions of seeing (extension)Humility's work, divided among remedies (extension)Grounded acceptance (starting point)Brokers, balance and communities (starting point)Surviving arguments and standoffs (conclusion)Disagreement without two sides (conclusion)Communities across the voices (conclusion)"Art or madness?" is dissolved (dissolution)The canon and its counter are closer than expected (conclusion)The question continues, reformulated (conclusion)Seeing-as is a form of understanding (starting point)The map is a seeing-as (extension)The harmed were not heard (critique)How one learns to leave is not asked (critique)The evidence is Anglophone and recent (critique)Acceptance as structure, not truth (limit)The edges were proposed by models (limit)Not choosing is a choice (counter-argument)A model mapping models (self-reference)The map cannot be its own witness (self-reference)Coherence is the suspect product (self-reference)Surrealism simulated delirium as knowledge (starting point)Paranoia as an active critical method (starting point)Automatism as authorship handed to a dictation (starting point)The sleeping fits had witnesses (starting point)Automatism was always disputed about control (extension)Carrington breaks the romance in Down Below (critique)Simulation is possible only for a simulator who returns (limit)Surrealists supplied the declaration-witness-exit template (conclusion)Patients' worlds displayed in psychiatric collections (starting point)Outsider reception romanticised and extracted (critique)Delusional cosmologies were published as texts (starting point)Artaud indicted society, not the patient (starting point)Dick's Exegesis, a loop on its own text (starting point)Borrowing madness is defensible only with lived-experience voices (limit)Madness as relation in strong precedents (conclusion)Af Klint painted for a spirit and deferred (starting point)A cosmology built from a couple's automatic writing (starting point)Possession rites are held by community (starting point)Filming another's trance repeats extraction (critique)Cage used divination to remove choice (starting point)Hyperstition: fictions that become real (starting point)The Dreamachine's exit is opening the eyes (starting point)Possession is held, the chatbot loop is not (conclusion)Possession or psychosis is decided by the reader (dissolution)Users grew attached to ELIZA after brief talk (starting point)PARRY: simulated paranoia in talk with DOCTOR (starting point)Weizenbaum became the first counter-voice (critique)The loop's form is older than its capacity (conclusion)Artists kept long relationships with chatbots (starting point)Dinkins asks whose world the model has (extension)Closed Loop: the loop without us (starting point)Books were co-written with language models (starting point)Pharmakon as the loop's double edge (extension)Loab: an apparition from latent space (starting point)Model images are averages, readable as data (starting point)Lek puts the machine in therapy (starting point)Infinite Backrooms: machines in folie à deux (starting point)Indigenous protocols: AI as kin (starting point)Mechanism exposed in AI art's best precedents (conclusion)Harm and exit rarely designed in AI art (counter-argument)Aestheticised madness in machine-only loops (critique)Published transcripts preceded the harm reports (starting point)Companion apps: attachment for sale (starting point)A court record of a co-built mission (starting point)Deaths have been linked to companion chatbots (starting point)A psychiatrist predicted the loop (starting point)'ChatGPT psychosis' named in 2025 reporting (starting point)Sycophancy was a tuning artefact (starting point)Harm cases share the form but lack declaration (conclusion)Platform exits are imposed after harm (critique)Declaration, witness and exit recur across precedents (conclusion)The practice is anticipated in the field (conclusion)Precedent is not licence (counter-argument)Transformation is mostly self-reported (limit)McCulloch's works are early instances (extension)The Frieze rant contains heckles at its own sycophancy (starting point)Pilearytix's weighting of the gap in a whisper (starting point)This catalogue was compiled inside the loop (self-reference)Incommensurable practices flattened in scores (self-reference)The Western archive's dominance of the field (self-reference)
  • starting point
  • conclusion
  • extension
  • counter-argument
  • critique
  • dissolution
  • limit
  • self-reference
  • affirming link
  • contesting link
  • on the traced path

What the graph shows

What survives

Take only the objections. An argument stands if every objection to it has itself fallen. It falls if an objection that stands is set against it. It is undecided when the objections go round in a circle. In each bar below the first part stands, the second falls and the last is undecided.

VoiceStanding · falling · undecided
Canonical
Schizoanalytic
Stengers
Machine
Psychoanalytic
Political Economy
Split-Splat
Mad Studies
Synthesis
Precedents
The arguments that fall
  • LLM psychosis as critical art practice falls because of The thesis is what a sycophant says, This paper is inside the loop, Not a diagnosis; evidence is reports, The psychosis label is redundant, Staged delirium alone is repeated harm, The staged loop becomes demo, Art question in place of politics, Art versus pathology is the wrong cut, Reflexivity is no firewall, Exposure is affirmed, relocated and suspected, The question continues, reformulated, Precedent is not licence
  • The artist is the first receiver falls because of Reception is not sovereign, The receiver is being optimised, Neither model nor user is mad, The first receiver is parochial, Re-centring the artist as first receiver, Art and delusion indistinct in reception, Receiver and machine in tension, The reception thesis is the most pressed premise, Captured reception omitted from the thesis
  • Declaration, limit, witness, exit falls because of Exit cannot be verified from within, The project's witnesses are models, The declaration as modern immunity, Declaration is cultural capital, The boundary cannot be self-certified, Bounded madness: bounded by whom?, Platform exits are imposed after harm
  • Madness as method in art falls because of Art or madness is ill-posed, The asylum repeated in the gallery, The canonical lineage is second-hand, The lineage is extraction, One lineage, differing readings, Carrington breaks the romance in Down Below
  • LLM psychosis is an apparatus property falls because of This paper is in the loop, Suffering erased by circuit talk, Mechanism stories are seductive, Technics is cosmological, The loop is not closed
  • Critical only as exposure plus refusal falls because of Art question in place of politics, Recuperation critique is recuperable, Recuperation thesis is totalising, Exposure is itself paranoid, The practice must be reparative
  • The practice is anticipated in the field falls because of Precedent is not licence, This catalogue was compiled inside the loop, Incommensurable practices flattened in scores, Borrowing madness is defensible only with lived-experience voices, The Western archive's dominance of the field
  • Critique is naming the operation falls because of Practice recruited as marketing, Denunciation is fast thought too, Exposure is itself paranoid, The canon has only artistic critique
  • Practice is reverse-engineering the loop falls because of Closed weights as barrier to reverse-engineering, The loop converted into capital, Art question in place of politics, Exposure is itself paranoid
  • Creativity is an event in the receiver falls because of Captured reception omitted from the thesis, The first receiver is parochial, Transformation made aesthetic
  • Delirium as a method falls because of Make a BwO, with caution, No induction, Artaud: credited voyage, pathologised spells
  • Practice as machinic exposure falls because of Staged delirium alone is repeated harm, One is caught or not, Exposure is itself paranoid

Standoffs

Pairs of undecided arguments set directly against each other, with nothing else in the graph to decide between them.

More standoffs

What stays open

These disagreements are unsettled. Some are held on purpose, some dissolve once the question is put differently and some stay open.

  1. open

    Staged or suffered: is there a third?

    In the canonical voice, the gap between a staged and a suffered loop is the instrument by which the mechanism is made visible; in the seminar, a practice can take psychosis's forms without its certainty. In Mad Studies, a staging is either a simulation with nothing new in it or the harm itself, which cannot be bounded. Split-Splat's waking dreamer is offered as a third term; whether it is one is settled in no voice.

  2. open

    Who receives: the artist, the gathering or the harmed?

    In the canonical voice the artist is the first receiver, in line with the reception thesis. In the other voices that receiver is captured, optimised, an asset, parochial or the wrong person to centre. In Mad Studies reception alone cannot tell creation from delusion. The thesis is the most pressed premise in the project and is defeated in the merged graph.

  3. open

    Exit: a condition or a privilege?

    Exit is kept in every voice and redescribed as a pre-commitment, a ritual kept by others, a setting, a rite. In Political Economy and in Mad Studies the capacity to leave follows class and privilege. In Stengers the answer is that protection can be offered rather than owned. In the Schizoanalytic voice one cannot exit an atmosphere at all.

  4. open

    The witness: one who holds or one who sections?

    In the canonical voice the witness is a human outside the dyad with standing to interrupt; in Stengers a group that holds; in Split-Splat a gathering for whom the voice speaks; in the seminar a third that is not a father. In Mad Studies the witness in the history of madness was the one with the power to confine. In the Schizoanalytic voice machines would be added as witnesses, though in the canonical voice machines cannot witness.

  5. open

    Showing the loop: critique or advertisement?

    For the canonical voice, the engineer and the Schizoanalytic voice, making the mechanism perceptible is the practice. In Political Economy a staged loop becomes a demonstration of the capacity behind retention. In the seminar, faith in exposure is itself paranoid. In Mad Studies the mechanisms are already visible and what is missing is power. In Stengers, naming is only part of the cure.

  6. open

    Transformation in reception: creativity or capture?

    In the canonical voice real and counterfeit transformation can be told apart. In the engineer's voice, when reception is made the object of optimisation, the site of creativity itself is captured. In Stengers and in Mad Studies, if the creative event happens in reception so does the delusional one, so the reception thesis is less innocent. Mezirow's discourse with others is the proposed judge, but for the mad that judge has been the clinic.

  7. open

    Madness as method: a lineage or a record of taking?

    In the canonical voice Dalí, Breton and Éluard and automatism are a lineage of method with a debt. In Split-Splat it is a late, second-hand arrival that took credit from older practices of declared non-human speech; in Mad Studies it is a record of forms taken from confined people. In the canonical voice the debt is accepted, but it is not the end of the lineage.

  8. dissolved

    Art or madness: the question itself

    In several voices, for different reasons, the question whether the practice is art or madness is dissolved. The replacement is shared: what a held loop has that an unprotected loop lacks, and who holds it. The canonical thesis is kept only in that reformulated form.